


Sokovia, Suburbia, and the Senate

by tielan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath, Canon Divergence, Civil War (Marvel), Developing Relationship, F/M, Family, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Normal Life, Post-Movie(s), Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5734168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You’re going to have to get used to doing a lot less than you’re used to," Russo had said as he looked over the results of Steve’s tests. "Push yourself too hard during this stage and you’ll be out for more than the six months I’m advising. Yes, you’re a supersoldier, and that serum gives you phenomenal cosmic healing powers, but that explosion you stopped shot a lot of radiation into you and your body is dealing with that."</p>
<p>"So am I safe to be around people?"</p>
<p>"Questionable," Russo said as he pushed his glasses up his nose, "but that has nothing to do with whether or not you’re still radioactive."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sokovia, Suburbia, and the Senate

**Author's Note:**

> I am sincerely unsure of whether I'll get this done before Cap3 comes out and throws everything out the window. (It may not, but I'm not holding my breath.) However, this section works as a standalone - more or less - and I'll see whether I have the time and/or brain to complete this in the future.

Dinner was from Portillos: burgers, Italian beef sandwiches, chips, and onion rings.

Maria’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel as they were waiting for the order. The movement was uncharacteristic. And fascinating. Steve had never seen her this nervous – and he’d seen her face down international terrorists, HYDRA agents, and Ultron’s bots. “I was never a very good cook,” she admitted as they drove forward to the window. “The twins and Esther can, but the twins leave a mess for someone else to clean up, and Esther will take three hours to cook something that should have only taken one hour.”

“Okay.” Steve took the tray of drinks as it was handed to him in the paper bags. The scent made his mouth water – it had been a couple of hours since his last energy bar. “And Paul?”

“Anna let him at the barbecue once.” She thanked the woman who’d brought their order out, and put the car into gear again. “We had to order takeout _and_ throw away the barbecue.”

“Really?”

“Did you see the backyard? That bare patch of ground by the patio?” Steve recalled the patch of dirt and ash, insufficiently hidden by the garden box which held a thriving set of gardenias. The grass had grown perfectly verdant less than a foot away, but within the space was nothing but burned ground.

“Uh. Lucky she didn’t let him cook in the kitchen.”

“Oh, Anna knew better than that.”

“She sounds like quite a woman.”

“She was.” Maria doesn’t speak for a few minutes, apparently focusing on the traffic, but in the corner of his eye, Steve sees the way her shoulders fall in a silent sigh of grief, and chooses to look out the windows at the neighbourhood they’re passing through.

Of all the places he would have expected to find Maria, suburbia was one of the last. And yet Fury had driven him to the end of the street, parked, and told him, “ _Number 1146. She knows you’re coming._ ”

However, as Steve had realised within moments of stepping into the house, ‘She knows you’re coming’ was not the same as ‘She’s looking forward to seeing you’. And even if Fury didn’t acknowledge it, Steve was uncomfortably aware that this was intruding into a part of her life she’d never told him about.

_How the hell do you hide a wife and two and a half kids?_ Stark had muttered as they’d changed into civilian clothing at Barton’s farm. And Steve hadn’t had an answer – not then, still reeling from the understanding of what he was, what he wasn’t, and what he couldn’t have and didn’t really want anyway.

He’d lived ordinary – and less than ordinary. Before Erskine and the serum, before the war. That wasn’t for him.

So what was he doing here?

They parked in the driveway of the shabby little house, and Maria took the drinks tray off the dashboard and grabbed a couple of the bags before swinging out of the car. Steve unclipped the seat belt and started to get out—

And took a deep and careful breath, easing himself back into the seat.

“Overdid it?” Maria had paused by the hood of the car. “Let me get the food inside to the slavering hordes and I’ll come out and help.”

“No, I’ll be inside in a minute.”

She shrugged and started for the house. A moment later, he heard, “Hey, Steve – catch!” Reaching up was an automatic gesture; the twinge at his ribs was an unexpected shock.

“Sorry,” she called, but kept on up the stairs to the house, leaving Steve sitting on the edge of the car seat, a burger in his hand as the evening slid down over Chicago.

_My professional diagnosis is that you ought to be dead._ Doc Russo didn’t mess with words.  _However, the fact that you’re not doesn’t mean you can just get up, grab your shield off the new Captain America and plunge back into battle. Your body needs time to heal. And you – you need rest. Supersoldier or not, you’re on the road to a burnout if you’re not already at the gates of it._

Steve still didn’t know what had possessed him to come and find Maria.

Maybe it was just that she’d vanished without so much as a word. One day, Stark was making announcements about how superheroes would do ‘what was right’, and the next day the world was a minefield of politicians and super-powered people declaring allegiance this way or that, and declaiming one side or the other.

And it wasn’t until he was in the midst of the fight for his rights and his freedom that Steve realised he’d neither seen nor heard from Maria at all.

Steve eased himself out of the car. He felt old. Which, technically, he was. Only he  _felt_ it now. Not forever, Doc Russo had promised him, just a few more weeks.

He unwrapped the burger and took a bite as he walked over to the front porch. He’d figured a few weeks would give him the time to heal, the time to rest, and a chance to find out what Maria had been doing while the superhero world went crazy.

He hadn’t been expecting this.

The front door opened as he reached the porch, Maria holding one of the bags in her hand and offering it to him. “I thought you might like to eat in peace. We’re eating out the back.”

“I’ll join you.”

“Your funeral.”

‘Out the back’ meant on the patio, around the patio table and chairs.

Steve eased himself down into the seat beside the skinny adolescent, who looked up from his Italian beef sandwich. “Hey, there was a bit on the news about the new Captain America. Is it true that he was frozen along with you but they didn’t find him until recently?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Paul,” Jono rolled his eyes.

Dave joined in with a withering glare. “Everyone knows Bucky Barnes died on a mission in Europe!”

“Yeah, but everyone knew Captain America was dead until the Chitauri came!” Paul retorted with impeccable logic. “So everyone’s wrong sometimes.”

The whistle rang out sharply through the evening air, cutting through whatever retort the twins had planned. “Boys, shut up and eat your dinner.” Maria drawled in the same tones Steve had heard her giving orders to recalcitrant SHIELD agents, “Jono, mind your language.”

“You’ve said worse before.”

“Yeah, I have,” she agreed, munching on an onion ring. “But not at the dinner table. Eat. Sorry,” she said to Steve.

“It’s okay. We saw some crazy dinners at the Tower.” Better times, before the world went insane. Well, _more_ insane.

“Yes, but you weren’t a guest at them.”

Steve started to remind her of his time with the Howling Commandos back in the war, but Paul’s ears had pricked up again.

“Crazy dinners? Really?” Paul goggled. “Like, even Mr. Stark?”

“Oh, most of the time Stark was the worst offender,” Maria said as Steve bit back the things he wanted to say about Tony Stark and his damned penitence that was really all about his ego and his need to differentiate himself from his father—

It took Steve a moment to realise he was being appealed to. “Um, yes,” he confirmed, vaguely recalling the question. “Stark’s usually in the middle of the crazy. It’s… He likes making trouble.”

“Paul thinks Maria makes it up,” Esther said while her younger brother fought to finish the mouthful of burger he’d just taken. “Because superheroes are _serious business_!”

Paul swallowed. “I do  _not_ think Maria makes it up! It’s just.... Tony Stark is, like, the greatest inventor. Ever.”

“You _do_ know that with great creativity comes equally great crazy?” Jono intoned in solemn tones.

“And that Stark used to make weapons before he found inner peace…and became Iron Man,” Dave added.

“He’s still awesome.”

“Even if he’s crazy,” added Esther slyly, then dodged as Paul threw a fry at her.

“Don’t even think about retaliation, Esther,” Maria said as she swiped Paul’s little paper pocket of fries. “And you started it,” she told Paul when he started complaining. “I’ll give these back when you’ve finished your burger. Maybe. If I don’t get hungry and eat them myself.”

Dave grinned over at Steve. “Did she boss the Avengers, too?”

“ _David_...”

Steve smiled back at the grin that was so much like Maria at her most unguarded and ignored the woman glaring at him from across the table. “I’m starting to see where she learned to do it so well.”

“Everyone’s a critic.” But she gave Paul back his french fries and the meal finished, if not in silence, then at least in relative accord.

And Steve found himself smiling as he relaxed back into his chair and listened to the Hill siblings chatter in the summer evening.

–

Steve was in the hallway, staring at the photographs on the wall when Paul clattered down the stairs.

“Uh, Captain Rogers, sir?”

He tore his gaze away from the picture of the gawky, gangly adolescent girl who smiled shyly down at the baby in her arms, and faced the grown and matured features of the infant in the young man. “Paul, remember how I told you to call me ‘Steve’?”

“Um, right, Steve.” Paul hesitated. “Look, I know Maria didn’t offer it, but you can have my room if you want. I mean, it’s not the neatest but I’ve cleaned it up some—”

Steve held up a hand. “Paul.”

“Sir?”

“ _Steve,_ ” he said, defusing the chiding with a smile. “Thanks. But I’m quite okay with the basement couch. Compared to some of the places I’ve slept, it’s actually pretty cushy.”

“Like, in the war?”

“Yes, in the war.”

“Wow.” Then, catching sight of Steve’s expression, Paul blushed. “I know, I know, war isn’t pretty. Maria’s said it enough. And Josh says it’s hard work. But Josh makes like everything’s hard work, even easy things.”

“Josh is your oldest brother?”

“Yeah,” Paul pointed at one of the pictures – a young man with a buzzcut and a military uniform enduring a hug from his mom. “That there’s after he came home from bootcamp the first time. Mom was really proud of him – she cooked all day to make his favourite things. The twins made jokes about killing the fatted calf, but they weren’t really jokes.”

He fell silent, and Steve put a hand on the young thin shoulder. “Your Mom will be proud of you, too, you know.”

“Maybe.” Paul looked over the pictures and his eyes found the one of Maria holding him as a baby. “She was always glad Maria had a career. She said she loved being a mom but she wished she’d had the chance to be something else, too.”

“We don’t always get the opportunity to be what we want,” Steve said after a moment, thinking of a skinny guy from Brooklyn who wanted to be a soldier. “And even when we do...” He trailed off, thinking of the years of the war, with the Howling Commandos, thinking of the years since waking up, working with the Avengers. “Sometimes what we want isn’t what we think it is.”

“Sounds confusing,” Paul said after a moment. “Like most adulting things.”

The laugh escaped him. “Adulting things?”

“You know. Things that adults do. Mikhaila and the twins talk about ‘failing at adulting’ all the time. I think they’re just teasing me, though, because their lives are _easy_.”

“And this from the guy who hasn’t gotten himself a summer job,” Maria commented as she came down the hallway with a bundle of sheets. “I thought you were going out to the game with the twins?”

Paul shrugged and started off down the hallway to his room before he looked back at Steve. “You’re still welcome to my room if you want.”

“I won’t take it. But thank you all the same.”

“I figured he’d ask,” Maria said briskly as she passed him the sheets. “And that you’d say no.”

“I’ve slept on considerably worse. And without sheets.” He glanced down at the bundle of linen. “Two months ago, I was sleeping under trees in the Yukon and counting myself lucky.”

“The Saturnus facility?”

“You _knew_ about that place?” Steve bit back the rest of what he wanted to say, but his hands clenched around the sheets.

“Don’t get stroppy with me, Rogers. Yes, I knew about that place,” she said, soft and grim. “I shut it down on Fury’s orders seven...eight years ago. I’m guessing HYDRA opened it up again?”

“Opened it up, aired it out, restocked it.”

Her mouth thinned. “Did you shut it down the hard way?”

“The very hard way.” Steve exhaled hard, remembering the hard crack of air, the shockwave that tore through the ground and shook the trees around him in a flurry of snow and pine needles. “We could have done with you out there, Maria. It was...chaos. Everyone at cross-purposes, arguing and going around in circles, all of us fighting each other and missing what was happening right under our noses. Such a _waste_.”

“I had responsibilities here.”

The words came out flat and hard, and she looked off down the hallway towards her siblings’ bedrooms, a faint, bitter twist to her mouth. And Steve suddenly regretted reminding her of the life she’d had to leave behind. It couldn’t be easy to be sidelined like this when there was still a fight out there.

“Well, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t miss you.”

“I miss it sometimes,” she said after a moment before her gaze drifted to the photos on the wall. “But this is important too, in a different way.” She sounded a little like she was trying to convince herself, and Steve nearly opened his mouth to be reassuring, before he realised it wouldn’t mean anything, coming from him. Doing this wasn’t her choice, it was her responsibility, and they both knew that he wouldn’t choose this either.

Then she smiled a little, and set her shoulders. “You’ll be all right to make your own bed? I’m afraid there’s no turn-down service at the Hill Hotel.”

“I survived the war,” Steve reminded her as he started down the stairs. “The Hill Hotel should be easy.”

“Hah.” She headed out to the dining room. “Say that again in a week.”

But as he began pulling out the fold-out bed down in the basement and started making it up, Steve wondered if it wasn’t the accomodations that would give him the most trouble.

\--

Steve woke abruptly to the sound of someone moving around upstairs. A glance at his phone told him it was six-thirty am – an unheard of time for him to sleep in.

_You’re going to have to get used to doing a lot less than you’re used to,_ old Doc R usso had said as he looked over the results of Steve’s tests.  _Push yourself too hard during this stage and you’ll be out for more than the six months I’m advising. Yes, you’re a supersoldier, and that serum gives you phenomenal cosmic healing powers, but that explosion you stopped shot a lot of radiation into you and your body is dealing with that._

_So am I safe to be around people?_

_Questionable,_ R usso said as he pushed his glasses up his nose,  _but that has nothing to do with whether or not you’re still radioactive._

He climbed the stairs without turning on the lights, and stopped at the top as someone trod softly past the basement door, then paused.

“Captain?” The whisper was light and soft and questioning.

He pushed the door open and found Esther in the hallway, dressed for jogging, her earbuds already slung around her shoulders. “You’re up pretty early.”

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“It’s fine. This is late for me.” Steve glanced out at the pearly morning light coming through the windows either side of the front door. “You’re going for a jog? Mind if I come along?”

Her head canted slightly, a measuring, considering look. “You’d outpace me easily.”

“Maybe not. I’m still in recovery.”

Esther shrugged. “I can wait five minutes.”

He was ready in five minutes, joggers, sweats, and a light hoodie which she regarded critically as he came alongside her on the driveway where she was stretching.

“Am I acceptable?”

Another shrug. Esther’s own gear was considerably more fashionable, deep colours in sleek styles. Not unexpected for a teenager of this day and age. She eyed him. “Are you going to warm up?”

“I don’t usually.”

She shrugged again and started out the gate at a steady jog, leaving Steve to follow in her wake.

He hadn’t really done much running during the initial phase of his recovery. Weights training to build muscle mass, although nothing like what he used to press. It was...frustrating. And, in a way, humbling, too, to be reminded of what he’d once been, how far he’d come. Even if he’d never be that little guy again, just to be ‘normal’ was a revelation – a reminder.

Although he doubted that a normal guy in recovery could keep up with Esther Hill. The girl set a pace that was just shy of gruelling.

Around a mile in, they reached a local park where several other early morning runners were doing a long jog around a circuit, and Esther went around twice, before setting off on another track that she explained had once been a railway line before the city had turned them into biking and jogging trails.

They crossed a couple of major roads, a railway line, jogged through a neighbourhood of old trees and big lawns, crossed another train line... Steve didn’t know the area well enough to fully keep up, although he did make the connection when they found themselves back on the jogging trail on their way back to the oval.

Esther checked her pedometer, went around once more, and then stopped at a resting place where many others had paused and were walking in circles, checking their phones, or petting dogs. Esther started stretching her legs, and waved briefly at an elderly woman who was just heading out of the park, but who eyed Steve long enough to let him know he’d been noted.

“My junior English teacher,” Esther said by way of explanation when the woman jogged off. “I think she’s had all of us at one time or another – even Maria.”

“So Maria grew up here, too.”

“Oh, yeah. Our granddad built the house, and dad grew up here. All of us have.” She looks up at Steve, with curious blue eyes. “Wasn’t this stuff in some file at S.H.I.E.L.D?”

“If it was, I never saw it.”

“And you never asked questions about the people you were working with?” Esther wondered, changing stretches from her calves to her thighs. “I’d want to know about them – who they are, why they’re doing this, what they’re here for.”

“Your sister’s good at compartmentalising. And at changing the topic.”

“Ha, yeah, she is. Dave and Jono have been trying to weasel stuff out of her ever since S.H.I.E.L.D fell apart. And Paul always wanted to know about the Avengers. They haven’t gotten anything out of her yet.” Esther huffed with amusement as she shook her legs out and bounced on the balls of her feet. “Are we ready to go back?”

On the run back, Steve considered the young woman beside him. There’d been a smug note to her voice when she’d spoken of her brothers trying to extract secrets from Maria. He had the feeling that the intel Maria’s brothers had failed to get out of her, her sister had extracted with careful skill and subtle tact.

Considering that all Steve had managed to glean through their years of work together was that Maria had a family in Chicago, it was worth remembering that this young woman was probably just as sharp and cunning as her sister – if not more.

“Maria said you’d finished school,” he said as they reached the sidewalk down her street. “Are you going to college in the fall?”

“No.” Esther shrugged. “I got offers, but we can’t afford the fees. I could defer one of the offers for a year, but we had to let the others go.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’ll work for a year. See how things look then. Mom...” Her voice hitched a little. “Mom always said that tomorrow could be totally different from today and sometimes it was best to wait and see.”

“Sometimes it is.”

In the corner of his eye, he saw her turn to look at him. “Your mom died when you were young, didn’t she?”

“When I was about the twins’ age. But I didn’t have family.”

“You had Bucky instead.”

_That little guy who wouldn’t give up? I’m following him._

“Yeah,” said Steve as they slowed down to jog into the driveway. “I did.”

“Is it weird seeing him carry your shield?”

“A little,” he admitted, then thought of sitting out beneath the crisp starlight, with Bucky staring down at his hands – the human and the metal one – the two sides of himself: human soldier and inhuman assassin. _Natalia talked about paying off a debt. But I can’t undo what I’ve done._ “But if I had to put the shield down, I’m glad he was the one to pick it up.”

Esther walked up to the garden bed, using the raised edge to stretch her calves. “Do you know what you’re going to do now?”

Steve put his hands on his hips and regarded the quiet street and the sleepy houses along it. Unwittingly, this teenaged girl had put her finger on the heart of the matter: where did Steve Rogers belong if he wasn’t Captain America?

“No,” he admitted quietly to Esther Hill and the suburban morning, “I don’t.”

–

When Steve emerged from the shower, Maria was already sitting at the dining table, papers spread out all around her.

The sight wasn’t unusual – Steve couldn’t count the times he’d found her wrist-deep in personnel reports, mission prep, or technical blueprints, and just watched and wondered at the razor-sharp mind behind the lovely features. However, the bare feet, tracksuit pants, and  _you don’t have to be crazy to live here, but it helps_ coffee cup were definitely new and amusing additions.

She didn’t look up as she ran her pencil down the invoice. “Stop grinning, Rogers.”

“How did you know?”

“Because you weren’t saying anything, you were just standing there, watching.” Her pencil circled an item, and she looked up. “If you hadn’t been smiling, you’d have asked a question, said something. You didn’t, so you were laughing at me.”

Steve figured now wasn’t a good time to point out all the times he’d watched her work and left her to her thoughts rather than interrupt her.

“Sorry. It’s just...a new look on you. For me, anyway.”

“If it was business, I’d be wearing business attire.”

Steve took a seat at the table. “Your stepmother’s medical bills?”

“She kept track of them as best she could, but the system’s a nightmare.” Maria sighed. “I tried to persuade her onto my insurance when I joined SI – Stark has a clause for uncovered family members – and she transferred Paul and Esther over, which was easy since they’re both minor dependants, but she wouldn’t transfer herself.”

“Would it have made a difference? To her cancer, I mean.”

“No.” Maria scowled at the paperwork, as thought it was solely responsible for her stepmother’s illness and death. “But it would have saved me all this.” She exhaled. “Get yourself breakfast, Steve. Anything in the fridge is fine. I think we have enough—”

“While I’m staying here, I’ll pay for the household groceries.” He’d decided on this last night. “And if I’m here more than a fortnight, I’ll pay my share of the rent and utilities, too.”

She looked like she wanted to argue it, before she shrugged. “It’s your money. Just don’t let the kids argue you into buying everything in the junk food aisle.”

“I think I can hold firm.” He looked pointedly at the cup of coffee, absent a plate. “Have you had anything to eat yet?”

“I was going to toast something...” Maria began, then sat back in her chair. “You’re going to feed me up, aren’t you? What was it Helen said? Worse than a Korean grandmother?”

“I got her gran’s recipe for kimchee, too.” Steve nearly grinned at the memory, before Helen’s last words to him replayed in his head.

Of course Maria saw it. “What?”

“When Registration came up there was a…discussion,” he said after a moment. “It was more of an argument, really. Everyone was angry, except maybe Vision. And Helen… Helen looked at us like we were students who were failing a test.”

“And you didn’t know you were being graded?”

Steve hesitated. “I didn’t think it mattered that much.” But it had. Coming from the courteous, insightful woman who reminded Steve in so many ways of Abraham Erskine, it had stung. “She said that it wasn’t about being registered, but about being accountable.  _Every conquerer needs a slave to whisper in their ear._ ”

_Don’t try to be a perfect soldier. Just be who you are: a good man._

“Accountability isn’t a dirty word, although some people would make it out to be. It can be taken too far, of course.”

He stared. “You were for Registration?”

“I would have stood for accountability, yes.” She sounded surprised. “For someone to oversee the Avengers, for organisations that superpowers answer to when things go wrong. Why do you think I put up with working with Tony?”

“So we were just another responsibility to you?”

“Yes and no.” Her brows drew together. “Life is complicated, Steve – you should know that. After SHIELD fell, managing the Avengers was familiar, something I could do. And I do think that you needed someone to keep you honest.”

“You couldn’t just trust us?”

“Tony created Ultron.” Her voice was flat. “Bruce carries the Hulk inside. Wanda can destroy minds. Vision could destroy the world. Trust is a difficult thing when the only weapons you have to save the world are a gun, a flying ship, and a superhero team made up of individuals who are good only because they choose to be.”

There was a bitter lump in his throat. Steve swallowed past it. “And the serum that made me also made the Red Skull.”

“Yes. It did.” Maria sighed. “Look, Steve, you gave up being normal to become a supersoldier. So the standard rules don’t apply to you anymore. The same goes for all the Avengers – even the ones like Natasha and Sam.”

“Natasha didn’t get a choice.”

Maria managed to give the impression of rolling her eyes with nothing more than a tilt of her head. “She got to choose whether to stay in or get out, and she chose in. Maybe in another universe, Natalia Romana, former Black Widow, teaches ballet in a New York studio and goes home to a warm cup of soup and a biochemist who doesn’t go green when he loses his temper. Natasha didn’t choose to become an assassin, but she chose to stay one. And Sam and Rhodey should know about rules and accountability from being in the service.”

Steve chose not to point out that he’d been in the service, too. He’d learned pretty early on, while the discipline was much the same, a lot of things had changed between the war military of his time, and the peace military of the modern world.

“Sam was anti-Registration.”

“Really?”

“He said he’d been targeted by too many civil organisations that wanted to pigeonhole him as dangerous to stand for being pigeonholed by yet another.”

She nodded slowly, as though digesting the information. “I can understand that.”

“Okay, so do you understand _me_?”

Maria stared at him for a long moment. Next door, the neighbour started up his lawnmower and the rumble of its engines punctured the quiet air of the morning. “You’re not normal, Steve. This life,” she waved a hand at the house and the table and the backyard and the neighbour, “will never be yours – you chose otherwise when you first took the serum, and you chose it again when you came back to lead the Avengers after Sokovia. So the normal rules don’t apply to you anymore. Registration should have been a set of rules that did – rules that the superhero community agreed to abide by.”

“Including putting down our names to be tagged like dangerous animals?”

“Including putting your name down to show you’re willing to follow these rules and that you agree to discipline when you go too far. So people know that you’re dangerous, but you’re willing to be responsible for it.” She didn’t drop her gaze from his.

“And, knowing me, you can still say that? That we’re dangerous?”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” she said with the first hint of irritation in her voice. “It’s all the other superpowered people who I don’t know and can’t necessarily trust.”

It soothed and stung, all at once.

“You know HYDRA sponsored the Registration Act, don’t you? That the people pushing it through the Senate were in HYDRA’s pocket?”

“You have a kneejerk reaction to anything related to HYDRA, Steve – which is understandable. But it’s not an excuse to throw the need for a code of behaviour out with the Registration.”

For a moment, Steve thought he’d growled. Then he realised his stomach had weighed in on the conversation.

He met Maria’s eyes, saw the hint of humour in them, and smiled, reluctantly. “I need breakfast if I’m going to argue this.”

“You need breakfast,” she agreed, her mouth curving in faint amusement. “But arguing this is optional, and honestly, I’d prefer not. I’d have been on the opposite side of the fence if I’d been involved in Registration, Steve, and you should just leave it at that.”

Steve considered it as he cooked breakfast.

He could leave it at that – it wasn’t like Registration was an issue for him anymore – but a part of him wanted to shake her and just make her  _understand_ . However, even if now was the time, here – under the roof she’d graciously extended to him – certainly wasn’t the place.

So Steve put a breakfast together – for her, for himself, and for Esther, who wandered through the kitchen while he was scrambling the eggs and tried to filch a rasher of bacon off Maria’s plate.

“Here,” he said, handing her his plate. “Have that instead.”

Esther’s response was to roll her eyes and snag one of the rashers off his plate. “I don’t want  _all_ of it,” she told him before heading out into the back yard.

“Welcome to the wonderful world of teenaged sisters,” noted Maria as the screen door slammed. “They don’t eat. They graze.”

Steve dished up the eggs and hunted around for cutlery. “Do I need to get anything specific for her to graze  _on_ ?”

“Take her with you, and she’ll tell you what to get.” Maria winced as he set the plate in front of her. “I think Esther has a better idea of what everyone eats than anyone else in this house.”

“Do you have any requests?”

“I eat anything as long as it’s not too badly burned.”

He made a note to do as much of the cooking as possible while staying here. “Chocolate-covered coffee beans?”

She stared at him, surprised that he’d noticed – as though Natasha and Barton and Pepper and even Thor’s steady flow of confectionary gifts hadn’t made it obvious - then rallied with a wry smile. “They don’t sell those burned.”

They made brisk work of breakfast, and Steve made toast and peeled an orange to finish while she loaded the dishwasher. He’d be hungry again in a couple of hours, but by then he’d have some energy bars to snack on.

“I noticed the chores list on the fridge,” he indicated the neatly drawn-up spreadsheet, most of the boxes empty.

“Anna enforced it.” Maria made a face as she slid the dishwasher drawer shut. “I don’t know how she managed it, but the chores got done.”

“Fear of mom?”

“Probably.” She stared at the spreadsheet a few moments longer, her expression oddly blank. And Steve suddenly wished for the mutinous look before she caught him watching her and smiled briefly. “It’s a learning experience, anyway.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“Tell me that in ten years when Paul’s in weekly counselling.”

“Well, they seem like pretty well-adjusted kids,” Steve notes. “Your stepmom gave them a good grounding.”

“The problem is the transition to adulthood.” Maria looked up at the ceiling and the peeling paint in the corners. “Dave has his scholarship and Jono will come out well whatever he does. But Esther wants into political intelligence – and she could do it. But to do that, she needs a degree, and we don’t have the money for college.”

“Does she need college? You ended up in world security through the military.”

“Yes, but that was luck mostly – the right time and the right place. And I’d spare Esther the Marines, if I could – it was the only option I had, and I’d rather she had more. And Paul’s worse. He’s got brains, but no drive. Think Tony’s ability to create and invent, but without the ambition.”

“Sounds like he’d be best in lab.”

“Which, again, requires a college education.” Maria shrugs. “We can get part of it by selling the house, but there’s seven of us and the house needs to be split among all of us. Goddamned Catholics.”

“If you’re Catholic, I thought the point is that you’re _not_ goddamned.” Steve waited for her noise of annoyance before he grinned and continued. “So you’ll all get a small portion of the whole.”

“Maybe.” Maria gave the ceiling a dire glare. “If we can fix it up. If I can get it sold. If Josh gets his discharge and comes home and actually starts being responsible for the kids...” She sighs. “Sorry, this has nothing to do with you and you don’t need to hear it.”

“I’m going to be a guest here for the next couple of weeks. The least I can do is listen when you want to vent. Consider it repayment,” he suggested, recalling all the times he’d sat down in her visitor’s chair and…well, now that he looked back, it had been something of a vent session for him, although it’d been in the form of conversations where they discussed everything and nothing. “I missed our conversations, you know.”

“Really?” She blinked, then smiled wryly. “I sometimes miss having a conversation with someone who isn’t ten years my junior.”

Steve kept his expression bland. “Well, I’m glad I could fill a niche.”

Long lashes fluttered as she realised the implications of what she’d just said. “I mean—”

“No, it’s okay. My ego can deal with the crushing blow of being considered mere ‘adult conversation’.”

“Steve.”

“Maria.” He matched her tone, but smiling, and after a moment, she smiled back, rueful.

“I’ll have to get used to having someone around who’ll call me on my shit, again.”

“And again,” Steve quipped. “I’m glad to fill a niche.”

In answer, she threw up her hands, making him laugh. “I cry ‘uncle’. Go get Esther and do the shopping before it gets too busy and someone recognises you.”

–

He took Esther and Paul to get groceries. Paul woke up as they were just heading out the door and insisted on coming, only he wasn’t fully awake and just mooched along. Steve made him push the trolley, and consulted with Esther about food.

It felt a little surreal, actually.

“I’m kind of surprised nobody recognises you,” Esther said as they finished loading the groceries in the trunk and she climbed into the driver’s seat. “Although I guess the beard helps.”

“The girls notice him,” Paul grumbled. One of his schoolmates had come over to chat to them – a pretty, perky adolescent girl who made big eyes at Steve, who played it bland and ignorant and polite big brother when Paul dismissed him with a, “ _Oh, he’s just a friend of Maria’s,_ ” while Esther made gagging faces from further down the aisle.

“Yeah, but that’s not _recognition_.”

They inched out of the parking space and eased themselves out of the parking lot. Esther muttered instructions to herself as she navigated the carpark, and her hands were clenched on the wheel.

“Hey,” Steve told her as they reached the lights that led out to the main road home. “It’s okay. You did fine on the way out here; you’ll be fine on the way back.”

She threw him a grateful look and steadied her shoulders.

“Maria always tells her what to do,” Paul said as the lights went green and they pulled out into the traffic. “Like a drill sergeant.”

Steve grinned – it was a rather accurate description of Maria. “She does like being in control.”

“Yeah, probably why she’s still single.”

“For your information,” said Esther sharply, “marriage is not the be-all and end-all of life for a woman, Paul. Just because it was for mom and Michaela—”

“Stow your guns, Essie! I’m just saying that guys like—”

“Guys like what guys like,” Steve interrupted, figuring he should head this off at the pass before it became all-out verbal war. “And what guys like is very individual to the guy.”

The silence in the back of the car was slightly stunned, but Esther gave him a brief grin. “Maria once said she’d probably kill Stark if she had to sleep with him  _and_ work with him. But apparently it works for Ms. Potts.”

“Yeah,” said Paul, finding his voice. “But Pepper Potts is hot. What?” Paul protested when his sister growled at him. “Steve agrees with me.”

Steve had been wondering about the ‘and’ in Maria’s clause – whether it was from experience, or simply conjecture. He’d never seen any evidence that there’d ever been anything between Maria and Stark, but then, Maria was reticent about everything and Stark was offhand about everything, so it was possible – except for the fact that Stark had Pepper. Still, even the  _thought_ of them together was kind of...revolting.

Upon being named, he dragged his thoughts back and reached for a diplomatic answer. “Pepper Potts is a brilliant and lovely woman with a great deal more patience than either Maria or I have when it comes to dealing with Stark.”

“And she’s hot.”

“And she’s an attractive woman,” Steve allowed.

“But not your type?” Paul asked as Esther rolled her eyes.

“Wow, personal much? Don’t be nosey, Paul, at least let him stay in the house a week before you start grilling him!”

“Sorry, Steve, I was just curious—Hey, Essie, turn it up, I like this song!”

With Paul occupied by the song – a bit heavy and overdone for Steve’s tastes – they got all the way home without any further curious questions being asked of him.

He roped Paul into helping him put away groceries, while Esther grabbed her snacks and retreated to her room, and one of the twins – Jonathan, Steve thought – pawed through the bags looking for things he clearly didn’t find from the huffy noise he made. Then he turned and stared pointedly at the rangetop and the frypan still sitting on it.

“Someone cooked bacon and eggs and didn’t share.”

“That was me,” Steve said, mildly. “And if you’d been up early enough, you’d have gotten some.”

“Early? On a Saturday?” The young man eyed him sourly. “I bet you went running with Esther, too.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Military types,” Jono muttered as he collected his coffee from the coffee maker and slunk out to the dining room, where most of the paperwork had been shuffled to the side. But a few minutes later, as they put the last of the stuff away, he called, “Hey, Rogers. You have plans for today?”

Steve looked to Paul who shrugged and headed off. “Not yet.”

The grin on the younger man’s face was wicked. “How do you feel about garden work?”

–

It turned out Jono ran a local gardening business during the week.

“Lawns and landscaping, mostly,” he explained as he trimmed the hedges around the garden and Steve ran the lawnmower along the stretch of lawn down the end of the yard. “Although a few people want vegetable gardens these days – tomatoes and herbs, some blueberries, that sort of thing.”

“When I was a kid, even in New York, a lot of people grew their own food in their backyard.”

“Yeah, the Depression.” Jono moved on to the next bush in the hedge around the edge of the garden. “But food’s so easy to buy these days, most people just buy it.”

“So how’d you get into gardening, then?”

“Oh, with six kids, Mom was always looking at ways to stretch the budget. Especially after Dad died and she only had the pension. She used to joke that I ate my pound of dirt before I was two years old.” Jono looked pensive for a moment, and his next snips with the shears were a little sharper.

“I think my mom would have liked your mom,” Steve ventured after he’d done a few more rows with the mower.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Mom always said it was a hard world for women – and worse for a woman with children and no man to help bring them up. She only had me, but I was work enough being sick most of the time.”

“Well, Mom had six of us. Seven, since she pretty much brought up Maria, too. But Maria went to Trudy’s when she was sixteen. Couldn’t take living with the old man anymore.”

The words were offhand, but Steve had already noted that neither Maria nor any of the kids mentioned their father. Old wounds there – as deep as Tony’s sense of injury towards Howard, maybe deeper.

“Trudy?” He questioned instead of bringing up the topic of Hill Snr.

“Oh, Trudy Johnson. She and her husband Sy live over in Beverley. We’ve known them forever – mostly through Maria, and their son Jamie. They gave Maria the idea of going in to the Marines even before she went to live with them.” Jono put the shears down and studied his work.

Seventy years ago, it probably wouldn’t have merited mention. Lots of kids went out to work at sixteen back then – Steve had stuck it out for a couple more years, aiming for art school. But in these times?

Steve didn’t glance back at the house as he asked, “At sixteen?”

Jono glanced at Steve, and seemed to hesitate. Then he shrugged. “I don’t remember it very well – Dave and I were five. But there was a lot of yelling and shouting and I think Dad hit her. Next day she was living with Trudy and we only got to see her on weekends.”

Which explained a lot of things about Maria. “Did—?” Steve didn’t quite manage to catch the question in time.

“He never raised a hand to any of the rest of us. Or to mom.” Jono shrugged. “Not that I know of, anyway. But Mom said it was better that Maria was safely out of sight. And Maria was happier, too.”

“So you only saw her on weekends?”

“Pretty much. Weekends and at church. Mom made us all go – well, us younger ones, anyway. She believed family was important.” Jono put the trimmer down and picked up a rake to start raking in the branches and leaves he’d cut. “If she hadn’t, we probably wouldn’t be that close.”

“You’ve got another brother and sister, don’t you? Older?”

“Josh is in the army. Currently posted out at Riley I think, although he’s been making noises about getting out. And Mikhaila got married at nineteen. Mom wasn’t happy about that, but marriage suits Mikhaila and her husband’s okay, even if he is from Wisconsin.”

Steve just grinned at the prejudice.

As he finished off the lawn, Steve reflected that this explained why Maria had always been friendly, but still a little distant. She already had her own peopl – imperfect and maybe a little broken, but still good.

It stung.

Which seemed strange, because Steve understood what it was to have people you didn’t have to be anyone else with. Wasn’t that what he’d had in Bucky? In the Howling Commandoes? Wasn’t that what he’d found in Natasha and Sam and the Avengers?

He didn’t begrudge Maria her family; he couldn’t.

And yet...

The screen door slammed closed behind Dave Hill, shuffling out in boxers and a loose t-shirt. “Can’t a guy sleep in around here?”

“Not when that guy should’ve been up hours ago helping me with the yard,” Jono said. “I had to conscript Steve.”

“Then you didn’t need me,” Dave retorted. “What are the jobs next week?”

“Connolly, Begbie, and two days at the Loerch place. She wants to redo the whole garden around the pergola. Tropical fantasy.”

“Yeah, well, just make sure she doesn’t add you as cabana boy to her fantasy,” commented his brother. Then, catching Steve’s look, he explained, “Advantage of being a young, good looking guy doing manual labour: women dig it. Disadvantage of being a young, good-looking guy doing manual labour: that includes older, married women.”

There was a laugh from just inside the house. Not one that Steve had heard often, but one that was becoming increasingly familiar to him. “I suggest you get off those stairs before your ego pushes you off the porch, Dave.”

“What? It’s not vanity when you know it. And I’ve told you the shit that goes down.”

“Yes, you have. But don’t go around boasting about it.” Maria stepped out onto the porch and came down the stairs to the patio, looking around at the yard with something like a grimace before her gaze lighted on Steve. “You don’t have to help out around the house, you know.”

“No,” he said, following her gaze across the yard and wondering if he’d done an okay job. She didn’t seem exactly pleased with what she saw. “But I want to. And it seems little enough to work for my keep.”

“Just don’t let them talk you into anything.”

Steve grinned as he unhooked the grasscatcher from the mower.

“Unless he _wants_ to help out,” Jono commented. “You ever considered _that_ , Mars?”

“I know you, Jono,” she said as Steve headed across the lawn to the space behind the shed where he dumped the load of grass in the compost boxes set up there. “And I know Steve. So I’m going to warn Steve that you can talk the birds down from the sky, and that he shouldn’t let you talk him into anything he doesn’t want to or shouldn’t be doing while I’m off at Trudy’s.”

Dave scrubbed his hands over his head. “Shit, Trudy. I promised to go look at her Japanese crab apple.”

“Well, I’m taking Paul over to fiddle with her television. Esther’s still in, although she’s going out with friends later this evening. You’re _not_ to tail her.”

“Bossy,” Dave commented, then raised his voice. “If Esther doesn’t go out with walking dicks, then we won’t tail her!”

No sound from inside the house, although Maria glanced back into the kitchen. “Remember the stories Mikhaila told your prom date in senior year, Dave?”

“Yeah, yeah, and Esther’s a lot more inventive than Mikhaila ever was.” Dave threw up his hands and headed back inside. “Whatever. I’m going back to bed.”

“You’re putting some pants on and getting out here so I don’t have to work Steve like a dog,” Jono retorted.

“Bossy,” was the answer from inside the kitchen. “It runs in the family around here!”

Maria sighed and met Steve’s gaze. “You’ll be okay, Steve?”

“I think I can survive an afternoon working with your brothers.” Steve glanced over at Jono. “We’ll talk pay for hours worked later.”

“Hey, you’re living under my roof – at least one-seventh of it is my roof, anyway. We can count that as rent...”

“Jonny...”

“Mars...”

She threw up her hands. “I’m going.” One finger pointed at Jono. “Behave.”

“Bossy!”

“And yeah, I’m the bitch you love to hate.” The cadences of Maria’s voice as she retreated into the house suggested she was reciting a poem or song. “And I’ll be back with an 808, ‘cause I’m bossy!”

The door shut behind her, and Jono glanced over at Steve with a mischievous look in his eyes. “I’ll cover for you while you run if you like. You’ll have until dinnertime.”

Steve laughed.

–

There were voices somewhere far away, calling his name.

If he concentrated, he could make out what they were saying.

He didn’t particularly want to concentrate, but one of the voices was pushing through the comfortable fog of exhaustion, a familiar cadence with a familiar exasperation.

“...did you _do_ to him?”

“He said he was okay to keep working.”

“And you took his word for it?”

“He’s Captain fucking America, Mars – of course I took his word for it!” A pause, then. “Is he okay?”

She sighed, and Steve almost smiled, imagining the expression on her face. He’d seen it often enough while she was working with the Avengers, usually after Stark said or did something that annoyed her. He cracked open one eye as Maria asked “Do you remember the news reports, Jono? The ones where Steve Rogers, Captain America, was _dead_?”

“He said he was fine!”

“’m fine,” he mumbled. The world was a little hazy, the crisp, clean edges of Maria’s face blurred as she turned to look at him. Or maybe that was the evening sky backlighting her against the lounge room windows. “Just tired.”

“You idiot, Rogers. You’re in recovery. That means taking it easy.”

“Was just gardening.”

“Easy as defined by people who _aren’t_ supersoldiers.” She glanced over him and shook her head. “Well, we’ve got dinner for whenever you and your metabolism decide food is no longer optional but necessary.”

Food sounded good. His brain was thinking this. But his body was also thinking that the sofa was really comfy. A conversation was taking place above him. It seemed to move oddly, fast and slow. Something about not missing the game, being out late, and—

Steve opened his eyes to evening shadows and pop music, and frowned as he sat up on the couch. It was fully dark outside, and the lights in the room were off, but the dining room light was still on, casting sharp shadows forwards of the couch where Steve had been napping.

Maria sat at the table, a laptop open and various piles papers across the table.

“What’s the time?”

“Nearly midnight,” she told him, making a mark down on one of the papers before putting it into one of the piles and looking over at him.

Steve blinked, trying to process the loss of time. He’d just laid down for a nap. “Midnight?”

“You really overdid it.” He tensed, ready to bristle at her criticism, but she was already turning back to her filing. “There’s a box of ribs and fries in the oven, warming. I put the potato salad in the fridge, though, and the slaw. Esther made it and she likes it with zing, so be it on your own tastebuds.”

Steve started to get off the couch, then paused as he looked at the quilt someone had draped over his body to keep him warm – white stars on a red and blue background, and old. Very old.

“Yes, I tucked you in.” Her smile was faint and a touch mischievous. “My mother was a Captain America fan when she was a girl – grew up in Brooklyn, loved the comics, collected a lot of paraphernalia. My grandmother made her that quilt for her ninth birthday.”

He laid the quilt out across his lap, looking at the fading of the fabrics in the patches, the signs of wear and careful repair. “It’s well-preserved.”

“It should be.” Maria hesitated, and Steve could see her deciding whether or not to share the story. The she shrugged. “My mother cleared a bunch of things out in preparation for my birth, storing them at my grandparents’ place. When she died, my dad didn’t want any of it back. So they kept it and stored it for me – or, at least, my grandmother did. I only found this out a few years ago when my grandfather died and I inherited the Brooklyn place.”

A few years ago in Brooklyn… Steve looked up sharply. “The Chitauri Invasion?”

“No.” A twist at the corner of her mouth. “He lived through the Battle of New York. Died in his sleep a few weeks later.”

Steve looked back down at the quilt, giving her a little space. Some of the repairs looked a little more...amateur than others, and he traced a finger over them, imagining Maria frowning in concentration as she carefully sewed the frayed pieces together.

He put it aside and climbed to his feet, stretching himself to iron out the kinks in his body and noting the faint ache that lingered in his shoulders and back and butt. Yeah, he might have overdone it just a bit.

It was going to take a while to get used to being ‘normal’.

Normal or not, he realised as he turned, he was _starving_.

“Ribs, you said?”

“In the oven.”

Steve helped himself and brought it out to the dining table where Maria had cleared a space for him at the table. He brought her a cider at her request and got himself a beer to go with dinner. “Did Paul get Trudy’s TV fixed?”

“No.” Maria rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t broken in the first place. Trudy’s husband Sy likes taking things apart in his spare time, and he’s found a kindred spirit in Paul.”

“Like Stark’s tinkering?”

“Pretty much. I wanted to see Trudy anyway, so it worked out for both of us.” Maria eyed him. “I hear you’re going to work for the twins.”

Steve grinned at her from behind a rib bone. “I swear it’s my own decision. Just a couple of hours a day.”

“A couple of hours like today?”

“Well,” he temporised, “I’m still getting used to...”

“Being normal?”

“Not having as much strength as I used to.” He dipped the fries in the spicy sauce of the ribs. “I’m okay, Maria.”

“You took an eight-hour nap,” she pointed out, ruthlessly. “That’s not ‘okay’ by anyone’s standards – let alone Captain America.”

“I’m not Captain America anymore.”

The words were out before he’d thought about them, and she went – as ever – straight for the throat. “And does that bother you?”

It had when he first woke up – an odd ache in his chest, in his palms. The feeling that a part of him was missing. He supposed, in a way, a part of him was. “A little. It’s all I’ve ever been.”

“Really? Because I heard that before Captain America came along, there was this guy by the name of Steve Rogers...”

“You know what I mean.”

Maria sat back in her chair. “I don’t think I do, actually.”

“Even now?”

“Even now.” The hesitation before her pronouncement was minute, but Steve noticed it. And considered pushing it before he decided he didn’t want to talk about this right now. So he ate the ribs and slaw and potato salad, allowing the flavours of smoke and spice to linger on his tongue as he listened to the music and watched Maria tap away at the keyboard, sorting through her stepmother’s paperwork.

He finished off dinner before he asked: “Where are the kids?”

“Paul’s in his room, playing one of his games. The other three went out. They’ll be home pretty late. Dave and Jono will have hooked up with some friends and gone out partying after the game, and Esther went downtown to go clubbing with friends.”

“You don’t worry about them?”

“Of course I do. I just know better than to fuss over them or fret about what they’re doing. And they know they can call me if they get into trouble.”

Steve grinned at her as he leaned back in the chair. “Still doing backup and support?”

“I’m good at it.”

“But you don’t want to be out in the spotlight?”

“I’ve been in the spotlight, briefly. Congress,” she reminded him, “after we took S.H.I.E.L.D down. That was enough.”

“It’s not all Congress, you know.” Steve stretched, rolling his head to stretch the aches in his neck and wondering if he could do with a short run through the neighbourhood to finish off the evening.

Maria shot him a frowning look, as though she could read his mind and disapproved of what he was thinking. “You should call Doc Russo tomorrow.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“People still get injured on Sunday.”

“I’m fine, Maria. I just wore myself out.” The steely expression continued. “I’m not one of your brothers.” Still no comment, and at last he sighed. “On Monday, then. _If_ I’m still exhausted.”

She accepted that with a short nod. “All right.”

Steve finished his beer, took his plates to the kitchen and cleaned up after himself, scraping the bones into the trash. Then, since the bag was full, he tied it off and took it out to the bins.

His shoulders and back ached a little as he lifted the bin lid – a new and discomforting sensation.

A flash of memory – another brick wall, dusty and grimy, the scent of garbage and piss in the alley, and the frustration stinging as the ache of his bruised and battered knuckles...

Steve twitched as a car revved its way down the street, noisy music and loud kids screeching out the window. A couple of dogs objected to the noise, but the barking died down after about thirty seconds. And then there was only the distant sounds of someone having a party, the distant rattle of an industrial train line, and the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees and bushes in the yard.

An ordinary life.

Somewhere out there, the Avengers Initiative was still going. The world still needed protecting. The fight still needed fighting.

This wasn’t a life he’d ever wanted – not before he took the serum, not during the war. Only after he realised the years he’d lost had he yearned for anything like normality – for the end of the fight, for the things that Peggy and the Howling Commandos had gained in the years when he was frozen with the Valkyrie: peace.

Wanda’s headgames had shown him the truth: he was a soldier, born of war, made for fighting. Normality was not for the likes of him.

And yet...

Now Steve was out here, lacking the abilities that had made him special, without his shield, without any responsibilities – an ordinary man in an ordinary world.

But that wasn’t a good way to look at it, was it?

_...everything special about you came out of a bottle..._

_...before Captain America came along, there was this guy by the name of Steve Rogers..._

And, behind Tony’s long-ago taunt and Maria’s droll comment, he heard Dr. Erskine’s voice that last night before his life changed: _This is why you were chosen_...

He’d been an extraordinary man doing extraordinary things in an extraordinary world for so long, he’d forgotten what it was like to be the little man; the small cog in the machine with a big vision and a dream of being someone who did big things.

Bucky knew, he realised. Had to live with the memory of what it was to be helpless, unable to control his own future, or fight the strings that held him in place as the assassin for HYDRA. He had the shield now; had the chance to fight back. Steve didn’t grudge him that – how could he?

And Maria knew, too. Knew what it was like to come down from doing important, world-changing things to...staying up late on a Saturday night to sort accounts while waiting for her siblings to get home. Being ordinary and normal, rather than getting out there to defend the world when it needed protection.

That was important, too.

Steve exhaled, a long blown-out breath.

This wasn’t the life Maria wanted, but it was what she had to do right now.

He understood that.

So he’d stay here for a while, get his strength back, take stock of his life and work out where he went to from here. And maybe learn a bit about how to be an ordinary person in an extraordinary world from a woman who already knew the lay of that land.

**Author's Note:**

> Maria's family are my own creation, and have appeared briefly in several other stories - most notably in "[A Woman Of Edges](http://archiveofourown.org/works/476449)" in the diner scene, and Maria's backstory (as related by Jonathan) is touched upon in my fic "[A Question Of Loyalty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3382538)". We get a glimpse of the woman Anna Hill was in both.
> 
> Hey, when you're building a backstory why not reuse the useful parts?
> 
> I have three more parts plotted out, however writing the epic Maria story I've wanted to write for the last three years has taken slightly longer than expected and proven more tricksy than I like. I've tried pushing forward on this one, but it's difficult.


End file.
